Episodes

Are your interviews falling flat? Are the podcasts and stories you're creating on the foundation of those interviews just skimming the surface? Let's face it: Desiring candor from the human in front of you is one thing, but achieving it is another. Here's a transformative, counter-intuitive solution that will help you go to the heart of anyone's story. To read this issue of the newsletter on Substack and subcribe, visit "Interviews are the foundation of great storytelling. Are yours falling fla...

On May 6, 2024, The 13th Step team was honored with a Pulitzer Prize nomination for audio reporting "for their gripping and extensively reported investigation of corruption and sexual abuse within the lucrative recovery industry that sought accountability despite legal pressure.” Today, we go behind the scenes, once again, with New Hampshire Public Radio Reporter Lauren Chooljian and Story Editor Alison MacAdam to learn their techniques for ensuring journalistic accuracy and fairness as they faced attempts at intimidation. And this close team learned how to create a "trauma-informed workplace" -- and how emotional support techniques helped them to keep going.   This is Part 2 of "Behind the blockbuster investigative series The 13th Step: The best defense is the truth."

In 2020, New Hampshire Public Radio Lauren Chooljian received an email about Eric Spofford, the founder of New Hampshire's largest addiction treatment network. In it was an allegation that Spofford was sexually abusing female clients and employees. Chooljian set out to learn whether this could be true. Over the next three years, she would go on a journey to learn the truth, not just about this allegation, but about widespread sexual misconduct in the addiction treatment industry. The result of that journey is The 13th Step, a gripping series that  won a slew of awards, including the duPont, sometimes considered the Pulitzer of broadcasting.  This is Part 1 of a two-part episode that goes behind-the-scenes of The 13th Step. Along the way, Chooljian, her family, and her news director become targets of retaliation. What started as a reporting task would also become  about another thing: Freedom of the press. And how, why, and for whom to persist with a story in the face of unnerving t…

Sound Judgment is about the craft of audio storytelling. Not about the marketing of podcasts. But today, we're bringing you a gift from someone I trust completely when it comes to audience growth: Jeremy Enns of Podcast Marketing Academy, and his co-host, Justin Jackson, cofounder of Transistor.fm. They've teamed up to produce Podcast Marketing Trends Explained, a limited series that extracts proven audience growth techniques from Enns' comprehensive annual survey of podcasters about their marke...

At some point, every one of us will reach a point in our professional lives where it's time to change — but the status quo, even when it's not working, is comfortable. Are you ready to say goodbye to your old life in order to find your way to a new, better one? But you don't have a map?  That's what Daily Creative host Todd Henry and his "story architect" producer Josh Gott wrestle with in the episode we deconstruct together, "The Curious Death of Todd Henry." You won't be the same after you listen to this episode — a play in seven acts.

It's a brave thing to share the outtakes from a tracking session. All the blemishes are right there. But Martine Powers and Rennie Svirnovsky from the audio team at The Washington Post have graciously done just that. They invited Sound School's Rob Rosenthal into their studio to witness Martine at work voicing an episode of The Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop, with assistance from Rennie. Hearing how they work as tracking partners is a real gift for anyone who wants to perform better in the mic bo...

Marketing might get you new listeners, new readers — new audiences for whatever kind of content you create. But to hook those new people and keep them coming back? To create a relationship with them? That's a whole other thing. Today on the show: six storytelling techniques for making unforgettable work.

When award-winning podcast producer, host, actor and The Moth storyteller Sam Mullins describes a place, a character, or a situation, you'll never see him simply say: "John Doe was of average height, with brown hair, a sad face, and a slight paunch." Not for him are conventional descriptions. Sam, who hosted Chameleon: Wild Boys, searches for the telling phrase, the sensory description, the thing you've never heard, seen, or felt before. Which just might be why he's award-winning in the first place. Learn how to use specifics in the last episode of our six-part series on storytelling strategies to hook your listener and keep them coming back.

Today's episode dives into critical storytelling technique that you may not be thinking about — but you should.

There is no story without a left turn. As you write a feature, produce a podcast, construct a speech or make a video, always be thinking: What's the new information here? What's the new angle? Have I uncovered a fresh, personal story no one has heard?

Does your content come to life or lie there flat on the page, uninspiring on the stage, or dull in people's ears? Take a cue from filmmakers and be intentional by using scenes wisely to make your content come alive.

Welcome to Part 2 of our new series on six storytelling strategies for making your content unforgettable, no matter whether it's for the ear, the page, the stage, or the screen. In this bite-sized episode, learn how to use structure to make idea generation and production easier and faster, while increasing your creativity! Featuring Amit Kapoor and Michael Osborne, cohosts of the provocative, hilarious show about dead celebrities, Famous & Gravy.

Over the last 18 months, storytelling patterns have emerged from the on-the-ground experiences shared with us by today's best audio storytellers. Welcome to Part 1 of our new series on six strategies for making your content unforgettable, no matter whether it's for the ear, the page, the stage, or the screen. In this series you'll learn how to use sound vision, structure, scenes, surprise, suspense, and specifics to make content that audiences love and share. Each of these bonus episodes is bite-sized. This is Part 1: Sound Vision. Yes, it's about sound — and branding. It also applies to you, writers, public speakers, and video producers!

Did you ever work brutally hard to achieve your goal — but when you got there, it didn't feel like what you'd imagined? The Nocturnists host Emily Silverman did. She'd wanted to become a doctor since she was a little girl. But when she finally got through medical school and into a residency, she was shocked to discover she wasn't happy. A visit to a live storytelling event, The Moth, led her to a new career: creating storytelling events and an award-winning storytelling podcast that's "fostering joy, wonder and curiosity" for physicians, nurses, and other healthcare workers. We explore how storytelling humanizes medicine, how it can humanize your profession, and how storytelling might be the tool we need to figure out what we really want — and where we belong.

Podcasts may be the best thing to happen to history class since we stopped teaching history as a list of battles. After all, what could be more dramatic than stories about the people who changed society, for good and ill? But producing history is harder than it appears — and going under the covers of history podcasts offers universal lessons for everyone interested in great storytelling, no matter the genre. Lindsay Graham, the voice of American History Tellers, American Scandal, and History Daily, shares his successes, failures, and self-doubts in growing one of the most successful history franchises in entertainment today. He also addresses Wondery’s controversial “immersive storytelling” practice, which includes fictionalized reenactments of history. We dissect a History Daily episode about Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, and an American History Tellers episode about the Salem Witch Trials – an episode that sounds eerily similar to political events we’re going through t…

In Season 4, we're examining the roles of bravery, fear and authenticity in storytelling. This episode explores the kind of story you may have written or reported yourself — or thought about, and maybe even chickened out on telling: a deeply personal, emotional experience. Perhaps you want to use it as an example or a lens into a bigger issue, one that matters to millions. When memoir is done well, it can move us in a way that almost no other form can do. But pulling it off can be painful, and it's tricky to discern whether your story is simply your own, or whether it is meaningful in the wider world. Maribel Quezada Smith grapples with all of these challenges in her tale of life and death, "The Latino Expectation of Pregnancy: a Story of Pregnancy Loss," produced for The Pulso Podcast. What do we do when joy and grief collide in the same moment? Please use care when listening.

Kelly Corrigan is blunt but compassionate, serious and funny, a straight shooter with heart and soul who is deeply curious about how we can tackle the world’s biggest problems — while also noticing the smallest of details and delights. For this last episode before our holiday break, I’m delighted to be able to bring her to you. We can all learn how to be better interviewers from Kelly, and also better practitioners of curiosity and wonder. Kelly Corrigan has written four remarkable memoirs, each of which was a New York Times best seller. Between her podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders, and her PBS show, Tell Me More, she’s interviewed authors, actors, philanthropists, and leaders of all kinds — everyone from Katie Couric and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to Melinda Gates, Anne Lamott, Michael Lewis, Margaret Atwood, and famed human rights attorney Bryan Stevenson — the list goes on.

How did Lemonada grow from one podcast in 2019 to a network of nearly 50 shows in 2023? Today on the podcast, we’re excited to feature a conversation from Podcast Perspectives, produced by our friends at The Podglomerate (the podcast firm specialized in producing, distributing, and monetizing podcasts for high-profile clients including Freakonomics Radio, PBS, NPR stations, Harvard Business School, and more). Podcast Perspectives brings on audio leaders and industry executives to walk through the biggest news of the day and to go deep on topics that podcasters need to know - like IP and rights issues, ad tech, podcasting’s role in media at-large, and more. In today’s episode, Podglomerate founder/CEO Jeff Umbro sits down with Lemonada co-founder and CEO Jessica Cordova Kramer. Listen to more episodes of Podcast Perspectives and follow the podcast: https://listen.podglomerate.com/show/podcast-perspectives/

Do you speak publicly or moderate discussions live on stage? Or do you dream about spending more time speaking to live audiences? If so, this episode is for you. Anne Bogel of What Should I Read Next is one of the original book podcasters. She’s so beloved that she is frequently asked to host conversations in front of live audiences – which can feel like being poised on a knife edge between success and failure. As she says, “Good panel moderation is invisible if you do it well. But if you do it poorly, there's a whole room of disappointed people who won't hesitate to let you know.” In this hilarious episode from our archives, Anne shares her hard-won secrets moving between two worlds: the intimate, personal world of talking with readers to the big, fun, performance-driven world of public speaking. Plus, Anne offers book recommendations for giving holiday gifts to your favorite audio storytellers.

If you’ve ever worked on a serialized narrative podcast, at some point you may have gotten all tangled up. Did Miss Plum find the gun in the library in episode 1? Then why is that same dialogue here again in episode 4? Why was the victim found dead in episode 2 but somehow you forgot and he's alive and kicking three episodes later? Keeping a complicated narrative straight across multiple episodes is hard enough when you’re sure of all of the facts. When you’re investigating a compulsive liar, it’s almost impossible. That’s the situation showrunner Karen Given walked into when Dear Media hired her and reporter Sara Ganim to investigate a serial scammer for Believable: The Coco Berthmann Story. Coco claimed to have been sex-trafficked for years, after which she gained acclaim as an advocate for trafficking victims. She also claimed her therapist locked her in a basement, her mother killed her sister, and that she was dying of cancer. The more Given and Ganim investigated, the more i…

It's another stop on my quest to answer the question: What does it take to become a beloved audio storyteller? This time, the answer is that magical, almost impossible-to-define-quality: presence. My journey takes me to Nikki Boyer, the celebrated creator of Wondery's Dying for Sex and now, the co-host and executive producer of Near Death. Her magnetism is undeniable — so much so that it helped catapult Dying for Sex to win The Podcast Academy Podcast of the Year Award in 2021. But getting there took more than skill building. It took a personal transformation from being a self-admitted attention-seeking actress to a storyteller who now shines the spotlight on others. In this episode, we're looking at the inner, value-driven qualities of a great audio storyteller. (This episode includes a discussion of suicide, and conversation about the Death with Dignity (End of Life Option Act) and the dying process. Listen with care.)

Some scientists say we think 70,000 thoughts a day. And a lot of those aren’t all that great. This episode is about how to make a narrative podcast about the thoughts we obsess about, and the thoughts that sometimes run our lives. Weight for It’s Ronald Young, Jr. shows us how to bring our inner lives to life in a way that makes for compelling, transformative storytelling, and that might call attention to the things we need to change in our outer world — in this case, how we, and society, feel about being fat. In this episode, you’ll learn how Ronald transforms ideas into compelling, propulsive narratives; about the roles rhythm and music play in writing and performance; and about the one thing Ronald believes makes the difference between failure and success in audio storytelling — and storytelling of any kind.

There's this thing people say about podcasts. As if saying the earth is round, they say, "Podcasts are intimate." Because we listen to them by ourselves. In our ears. But we do that with a lot of things. How intimate is the ad you hear on hold? In truth, podcasts are only as intimate as we—the producers, hosts, and editors—strive to make them. Anna Sale, creator and host of the award-winning show Death, Sex & Money, is a master of making podcasts intimate. On this episode, Anna shares how she does it. In the course of breaking down the DS&M episode “Bells and Bills: The Price You Paid for Your Wedding,” Anna talks about asking blunt questions, carefully; the detailed ways she prepares people so they feel comfortable revealing their most personal stories; how to balance sharing highly personal conversations on an enormously public platform; and about making mistakes, repairing them, and having compassion for herself and for her guests and sources. And she talks about what she is mos…

Did you ever have something that troubled you for years — something so intense that it affected your entire life? That describes the issue of class for host and senior producer Jonathan Menjivar of Audacy’s Pineapple St. Studios. Jonathan, the son of immigrants, grew up in a working-class home. His life today is extraordinarily different — and, as he says, that change in class caused him “to act in strange and funny ways.” Class causes most of us to behave strangely, he believes — and that’s the thesis of his wildly thought-provoking, moving and funny narrative series “Classy.” You’ll learn how to transform an issue that largely plays out inside our heads into an entertaining series with characters, scenes, tension and emotion. You’ll learn how Jonathan decides what parts of his life to share (cashmere socks play a role) and what to keep private. You’ll learn how he and his team “found their collective voice.” You’ll learn how Jonathan, who was a producer at Fresh Air and This Ame…